2025-08-26 16:36:35Grey hated mirrors.
There was one directly across from him in the dark-paneled study, tall and antique, the kind that made every shadow behind you look like a figure waiting to strike. His reflection stared back at him, hollow-eyed and stiff, a man wearing the life of a stranger. He loosened the buttons on his cuffs and turned away from the glass. Across the room, flames flickered in the hearth, dancing around iron logs that hadn’t truly warmed this place in years. The fire was just for show. Like everything else in this house. He poured a glass of scotch. Didn’t drink it. The meeting with her—Lana—had been shorter than expected, but it had shaken him more than he wanted to admit. She was exactly like the girl in the painting. Not similar. Not close. Identical. Down to the scar at the edge of her left brow, just beneath the hairline. He hadn’t noticed it immediately. But now he couldn’t unsee it. And the name. Alana. He remembered whispering it, once. Before his name was ever Grey. Before he’d been shipped off to Europe with nothing but a new passport and a fabricated birth certificate. He stared into the fire, jaw tight. His adoptive parents—if he could even call them that—had been loyal to the Thompsons. Devoted, even. They followed the family’s orders like scripture. And the first rule had always been the same: Do not ask about your past. So he never did. Until now. He’d always suspected something was off. Always felt like a puzzle with one missing corner. And now, that corner was standing upstairs with his face and his eyes and a name neither of them had chosen. He took a breath and finally sipped the scotch. The arranged marriage had been sprung on him weeks ago, in a letter much like Lana’s. Cold. Precise. Final. The contract had existed long before his knowledge of it, inked into estate records by “guardians” he’d never met. And the reason for it? Vague. To preserve the legacy of the Thompson bloodline. To fulfill an agreement made long ago. To maintain the balance of assets and heirs. Grey had scoffed at it, of course. He didn’t need another name, another title, or another stranger in his life. But now? Now he wasn’t sure the marriage had been about business at all. Maybe it had never been about money or power or legacy. Maybe it had been a leash. A way to control them both. He pulled a file from the drawer beside the fireplace—thin, bound in leather, unmarked. Inside were only four pages, and none of them gave real answers. A single photograph of Lana taken weeks ago, grainy and distant, with the word “CONFIRMED” stamped underneath. Confirmed what? He flipped to the final page. It was a birth certificate, partially redacted. Father: Classified. Mother: Deceased. Name: Alana Rose Thompson. Twin Brother: [Redacted]. He stared at the black bar across his own name. Someone had tried to erase them both. Separate them. Bury their bloodline beneath a web of contracts and secrecy. But why? And why reunite them now? He turned the certificate over and noticed, for the first time, a hand-scribbled note in the corner. Faded. Nearly gone. “Only together will they remember.” The room felt colder. He dropped the paper and stood, pacing toward the bookshelf. His reflection caught in the mirror again—him, and something behind him that disappeared the moment he turned around. He checked the study doors. Still locked. Still alone. Then why did it feel like someone else was in the room? He pulled open another drawer—older records, letters from his adoptive father, ledgers detailing every “donation” made by the Thompsons to their handlers over the years. Every move Grey had made, every school, every country, every hospital visit—tracked. Curated. Lana’s file was thinner. She’d lived a fractured life. Orphanages. Shelters. Nothing stable. And yet—she’d survived. Like him. Someone had kept them alive… separately. Someone had pulled strings to keep them apart. He exhaled slowly, then looked back toward the fire. How long until she started remembering? Would the estate itself trigger something? The portraits? The wing she’d been placed in? Or would she fight it—fight him—until it was too late? A knock rattled the study door. Sharp. Purposeful. He froze. No one ever knocked at this hour. He crossed the room and cracked the door open. It wasn’t a servant. It was the butler. Expression unreadable. “What is it?” Grey asked, voice low. “Apologies, sir. But Miss Rey has requested to speak with you. Immediately.” Grey’s pulse ticked faster. “What happened?” “She says she saw something in her mirror, sir.” The butler’s mouth twitched—barely. Not fear. Not doubt. Something closer to recognition. Grey straightened. “She’s not safe alone in that room,” the butler added softly. “Not tonight.” Grey didn’t ask why. He didn’t need to. He turned, grabbed the file from the desk, and followed the butler down the dark hall, his footsteps echoing against centuries-old stone. Because if she was starting to see what he feared… Then something buried was trying to rise again.
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Chapter Eighty — What Remains of Us
By morning, the rain had thinned to a mist that clung to the trees like breath. The world outside the cabin was a blur of gray and green, silent except for the dripping of water through leaves. Grey hadn’t slept. Lana could tell by the way he stood at the window, shoulders rigid, eyes fixed on the fog. The torn page from Seraphine’s letter lay on the table between them — five words that had rearranged everything they thought they knew. You’re looking in the wrong fire. Lana rose quietly, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders. “You’ve been standing there for hours,” she said. Grey didn’t look away. “I keep thinking about the timeline. If Seraphine’s right — if there was another fire — then the one that killed my mother might’ve been staged. Everything since might’ve been built on that lie.” “She’s baiting you,” Lana said softly. “Or warning you. I can’t tell which.” He finally turned, eyes shadowed but alert. “There’s an old Thompson site north of here — a textile property. It b
Chapter Seventy Nine – The Warning
By morning, the storm had drained itself into a gray, exhausted drizzle. Grey was already dressed when Lana opened her eyes. The ledger lay closed on the table, wrapped once more in its oilcloth, as if putting it away could undo what it had revealed. “I need to go back,” he said simply. “There’s someone who might know more. My uncle’s assistant — Harlan. He handled Foundation correspondence.” Lana sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest. “You think he’ll tell you the truth?” “I think he’ll slip up trying not to.” He left before she could argue, leaving only the faint smell of rain on his coat and the soft creak of the door. For hours, the cabin held its silence. Lana made tea that went cold before she ever tasted it. The ledger tempted her like a wound — impossible not to reopen. She turned the pages again, tracing the names. Some entries were marked lost in incident. Others had no endings at all. One entry, written in rushed ink, simply read: Subject relocated – location
Chapter Seventy Eight - The Ledger
The lamp had gone out sometime after midnight, leaving the hut soaked in blue-black quiet. Lana lay awake, eyes open to the faint glow leaking through the window slats. Every creak of timber felt amplified, every breath heavy with thought. Grey hadn’t moved for nearly an hour. But she knew he wasn’t asleep. He never was, not when his mind was circling the past like a wolf around a wound. She turned her head toward him. “Do you ever think,” she murmured, “that some things survive just to haunt us?” Grey’s answer was low, rasped, almost lost to the dark. “Every day.” It wasn’t a confession. It was a truth scraped raw. Silence stretched — long, heavy, pulsing with the echo of the stranger’s warning still alive in her skull: Don’t trust him fully. It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have sounded so believable. Finally, Grey pushed himself upright. His outline cut against the faint glow of the dying embers. “There’s something you should see,” he said quietly. He rose, cross
Chapter Seventy-Seven — The Night Watch
The sound of Lana’s breathing steadied before it softened. Grey waited a while longer to be sure.The lamp had gone out completely now, leaving only the dim light of the moon spilling through the window — a thin, colorless wash across the floorboards. He sat where he was, on the low chair near the hearth, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely, listening to the quiet.Outside, the wind had eased. A faint drip of melting snow ticked against the eaves. The kind of silence that came after long violence — too still to be trusted.He should have slept. He knew that. But his body had long forgotten how.He turned his gaze toward her — the narrow rise and fall of her shoulders under the blanket, the faint line of her jaw in the half-dark. Even in sleep, she looked tense, her fingers curled into the fabric as though bracing for something.He exhaled slowly.Don’t trust him fully.The words had hit her hard. He’d seen it in her eyes — the flash of fear, the betrayal she tried to hide. He c
Chapter Seventy-Six – Ash Between Us
The wind had died down by the time Grey shut the door, but the cold clung to the seams of the little hut. The paper bag he’d brought—bread, two tins, and a thermos—sat forgotten on the table between them.Lana hadn’t moved since he came in. The card still lay near her, charred around the edges, the faint trace of smoke curling from it as though reluctant to leave.Grey crouched beside her, studying the floorboards, the shadows, the corners. He didn’t touch her. “Whoever it was,” he said quietly, “they knew how to get this close without leaving a sound.”Lana nodded numbly. Her hands were stiff, her knuckles white against her knees. “He didn’t break in. He just… stood there. Like he knew I’d wake.”Grey’s gaze flicked to her. “He?”She hesitated. “I think so. His voice was low, soft. He said…” Her throat closed. The words still felt too heavy, too strange. Don’t trust him fully.Grey didn’t push. He stood slowly, arms folded, his profile sharp against the flicker of lamplight. “And the
Chapter Seventy-Five: Shadows Don’t Burn
The silence after the storm had its own kind of violence.Grey set the paper bag down on the counter — a simple, ordinary thing, the smell of coffee and bread spilling into the cold air. But nothing about the moment felt ordinary anymore.Lana was still standing by the table, the edges of the burned card singeing her palm. She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “I didn’t see his face,” she said softly. “He was gone before I could—”Grey was already moving toward the window, scanning the treeline beyond the frost-glazed glass. “How long ago?”“Minutes,” she murmured. “Maybe less.”He turned back to her, his expression sharpening into that unreadable calm he wore when danger brushed too close. It wasn’t fear she saw in him — it was calculation.“He left this?” Grey asked, nodding toward the card in her hand.Lana hesitated before holding it out. The words were nearly gone, the ink burned at the edges. Grey’s fingers brushed hers as he took it — a small contact that sent her nerves sting
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